Mysteria: A whole new world.

I come bearing good news: The "Survival RPG Update" is finally here, after much planning and work behind the scenes. I'd like to thank @Dabriel and @Old_Dutchbeard for making this possible! It is a lot further behind schedule than we hoped, but that is due to Ender and I wanting to refine the good work Dab had already done so it could meet its full potential for an impressionable release.

Survival has been lacking updates for quite a while now, while we've been deciding the direction we would like to take it. To me, doing small updates such as new mob arenas or minigames is just not worth the effort anymore since they are enjoyed and used for a few days then tossed to the side. We need something that's actually special and one of a kind on Survival. Our focus is shifting towards creating content that will be enjoyable and thought provoking for extended periods of time, rather than just for a few days. This means that we are beginning to develop survival as its own game, much like the direction we are going with Invasion.

Dab has helped me realize that Survival can still be a creative gamemode where we can innovate. I've long since felt boxed in and limited by the normal Survival we've had for so long. My problem is that I get bored when I don't feel like I'm pushing some form of envelope, and with the whole "Friendly Survival" gamemode, there's only so many envelopes you can push. Sure, we could add more bosses, more loot, fix the few bugs, but at the end of the day- it would still just be one of the many other survival servers out there with similar things. That interests me no longer. But I think you guys feel the same way.

The main demand a lot of you have had for Survival for quite some time has been for dungeons. We decided to add them, but not the kind you were expecting. Most servers just have a Dungeon you can randomly teleport to and complete, with no story behind it, it's just there. When re-evaluating our stance with Survival, I realized we could actually go really in-depth with what we're doing here, and make more than just a meaningless way to kill bosses and get loot. Thus, a storyline was born, and future updates to Mysteria will unveil new areas to explore, storytelling, characters to speak to, quests to complete and evil foes to conquer. This release will be just the beginning of an ongoing story for the new world, but it gives you a taste of the world and what's to come.

Scripted Quests

These new quests are for guiding you through Mysteria and providing context and lore for the world around you. You will find characters scattered around in towns and villages. If you right-click a character and they have something to say, you will be able to talk to them and select your own answers if they ask you any questions.

Dungeons

Dungeons are an important part of almost every RPG game. They were supposed to be the main feature of this update from the start, but now they are just a part of it. We don't recommend fighting the bosses alone, because if you die, you'll probably lose your things. The bosses are much stronger than the bosses we currently have, and they have custom skills and speech as well during the battles. All dungeons require one ore
more dungeon keys to enter, but some you can visit once without a key if you are sent there from a quest.

Libraries

Libraries serve a few purposes to the gameplay; you can find them in towns and in some castles in Mysteria. They are for learning about the world around you, and are also where dungeon keys can be bought from. If you talk to the main librarian, you can open a crate menu for dungeon key segments.. Each dungeon will have a crate in the menu, some with more and less key segments. After you've obtained the three segments for the first dungeon, you will then have to visit the blacksmith for him to make a key out of the segments.

Blacksmith

He's a chill guy, and really useful. In this version of the update, the blacksmith has one job, which is taking segments and creating working keys out of them. The keys you get from the blacksmith will be fit for using on an actual dungeon!

Gems

There is a new currency for Mysteria called Gems. They will be useful with trades, keys, and everything else in Mysteria that requires money/trading. This version of Mysteria doesn't have a lot of uses for the Gems yet, but that will change as it progresses, so we recommend you start saving them up after the release. Grinding them is simple, in this version, mobs have a chance of dropping gems (only in Mysteria). Mobs have camps almost in all directions. If you find one, feel free to kill them and collect ye' old Gems.

Things to know

As of version 1.0, the only way to get to Mysteria is with a teleport scroll obtainable from the vote crate. Simply right click the scroll once, then again to confirm, and it will teleport you a castle near Greenfields. There will be other ways to obtain the key in the future, perhaps even from other crates or the store. From there, you can begin your journey and speak to Albert, who will give you your first quest as a newb Mysterian. To leave Mysteria, you simply just go back to /spawn. You will need a new key each time you want to go back, so keep that in mind. For 1.0, you may logout in Mysteria and still be there when you rejoin if you don't want to have to use a lot of keys.

Concluding

I'm sure all of you will agree that this is a step in the right direction to give Survival some actual sauce that it so desperately needs and lacks. From this point on we want to focus more on what actually matters on Survival instead of the updates being a question of what kind of new loot or what kind of mob arena, all of which you guys are obviously bored of, hence why I stopped doing them. We are more concerned now with creating things that are going to create lasting engagement for both you guys and new players who would like to try out a style of RPG they have likely never seen before in Minecraft. Our end goal is to create a more in depth and unique experience to go along with our normal Survival gameplay, for those who want more than just sandbox Survival with extra bits and bobs. May I remind you that this is still considered a BETA release, so it is nowhere near what we consider to be completed. But it does feature a lot of the types of mechanics the game will have as it progresses, and I think you will all love having a world like this to escape from just normal surviving.

Oh yeah, and we will have a WIKI that will contain information about both Invasion and Survival ready soon, at wiki.conspiracycraft.net. I look forward to having a more central and informative hub where everyone can go to learn anything they need to about our games.

Release

Survival will go down Thursday night for the preparations and installment of the infrastructure needed for Mysteria. When it comes back online, it should be around Friday morning (around midnight or possibly a couple hours before) and fully functional. You will then be able to get teleport scrolls from the vote crate to begin your journey!

It was a pleasure working on this project, one of my biggest.
This Update will show you the meaning behind a real Survivalist and an adventure. And I'm actually proud of what we were able to achieve while making it.
Thank you @JammTheGoat for giving me this opportunity, for letting me work on this. The hype is real.

Thanks to @Old_Dutchbeard for the story development and @Osleya for the help she offered (Building and Being annoying :>)